When It Feels Like Nothing Else Matters
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Western AU. Erik dies, and leaves Emir and Christine behind. And as they grieve they learn to love each other for who they are, and not only for Erik having loved them both. Charoga. Pharoga. Christine/Erik/Daroga


**A/N: A follow on to 'Meet You At the Delta' and 'Run into the Sea'. You don't have to read those, but it makes this sweeter and angstier if you do. Named, like those, thanks to 'Delta' by Mumford & Sons.**

* * *

He grew up speaking five languages, but there are no words in any of them to describe how he feels when Erik dies.

Eleven years of knowing how it would happen (eleven years since that day in Dodge, Erik appearing at his door, battered and dusty from the long ride, the visible half of his face pale) and he would never have been ready for it.

Erik breathes his last on a cold morning in November, his illness having finally beaten him. (The pulse faint in his neck flutters for several more heartbeats, before it, too, fails. The memory of how it stuttered and faded will live in Emir's fingertips forever.)

They wash him, and dress him in a dove-grey suit that he loved but that he had grown much too thin to wear in life, and they bury him, there in Glenwood, the first flakes of snow dark against the grey sky, mountains rising high.

Emir longs to reach out to Christine, to take her hand and squeeze it, but his own hand refuses to move, his tears half-frozen on his cheeks.

Her cheeks are roughened with her own tears, blue eyes shining bright.

That night he kisses her, or maybe she kisses him. He can't be sure but one of them kisses the other and it's a nice kiss, but Erik is dead and all he feels is numb.

He lies awake all that night, looking up at the ceiling above them. Last night they lay in this bed and Erik was still between them, and neither of them slept because they knew he would never wake. Tonight they lie apart, the space left for Erik between them, where he should be, but Emir cannot make himself reach across it.

(He is not sure he wants to.)

Christine sleeps, now, the sleep of the weary exhausted, but Emir can't close his eyes, and the lump in his throat is tight.

He gets up, gets up and gathers his things, and some of Erik's things. (The stickpins, most of the cravats. The portrait he made for one of Erik's birthdays, the sketch he did of him as he lay ill, and dying. The sketch of Erik's hands he leaves behind, for Christine. She loves him too, just as much he does, and it doesn't matter that he's dead because they'll always love him. It's deep in their blood.) He debates leaving a note for her, but what can he say? _Erik is dead and I can't bear to stay_. How could that do anything other than upset her?

She is upset enough without him adding to it. Leaving is the only thing he can do.

He leaves a simple _I'm sorry_ and a sketch of her sleeping face, then he turns, and goes.

* * *

Even six weeks before he died, Erik's laugh held the whole world.

He barely had breath to speak, never mind laugh, and the sound of it through the crack in the door made Emir stop dead, some unnameable thing caught in his throat, along with the tears that welled in his eyes.

But Erik was laughing, giggling!, between gasps and coughs and even as Christine tried to shush him, tried to keep him from overstraining himself (and Emir would do the same), there was something so precious about it. (Even knowing it would be the last time.)

He brushed the tears from his eyes as the giggling gave way to coughing, tried to compose himself so the sight of him upset would not upset Erik.

And just as Emir had gotten himself under control, he stopped again. Erik's voice, raspy and breathless as it was, was unmistakable, and his heart wrenched to hear it.

Then the words became clear

"…so beautiful, always. Even in…Mexico. Even…that first night…"

He might have taken the words to be about Christine, who was always beautiful and seemed more beautiful even with the terrible strain they were each under, only for the reference to Mexico. In all of their travels, they had never been to Mexico with Christine.

Mexico was where he met Erik, and there was a thunderstorm, that first night.

He didn't think Erik remembered it. It was two nights later that they kissed. But the first night they met he was soaked to the bone, blue uniform stained with mud and blood. He had not shaved in three weeks and had ridden hard to cross the border after deserting. War had never been for him. His horse was damn near played out, and the lightning that night spooked her, and by the time he found a cantina he looked as if he had swum through a swamp.

Erik was playing a piano, as all around him people danced.

The Erik of twenty-five years ago was like someone conjured out of a story for children. Tall, and thin, quick to smile when the mood took him, dancing eyes, fingers like magic racing across the keys, all dark hair and angles and casual elegance like a prince of the underworld, mask covering half of his face.

Fresh tears welled in Emir's eyes, to hear Erik speak of it.

"…loved him…the first moment…"

Erik's voice was so very faint, painfully so. Emir peeked around the door, and saw Christine half-lying on the bed, on his usual side, one arm cradling Erik's head, her free hand resting on his chest. She did not look up to see him. Her eyes were only for Erik.

Emir would never blame her for that.

Even from the door, he could see the slight smile, tugging at the corner of Erik's mouth.

"Such…a mess…of a man." And the words were filled with such fondness Emir's heart throbbed with love and grief.

"He still is." Christine's smile was just as soft as Erik's, just as fond, and something stabbed at Emir's heart to hear it, and the noise Erik made that was almost another laugh.

"Our…mess."

Christine bowed her head, and kissed his forehead lightly. "Ours."

* * *

Erik had been calling himself Enrique, in Mexico. Emir remembers that bit, and the way the name rolled on his tongue when he tried it afterwards. But at the time he misheard him, and thought he gave his name as Erik. So that is what he called him, and a smile caught at Erik's lips, and he wore the name ever after.

(Emir, of course, had not known that Erik's birth name was Erique. That was a secret Erik imparted to him years later.)

The night they kissed, he found Erik walking beneath the stars. Which of them moved first, Emir can never remember, only that kissing led to fumbling fingers, and Erik's touch sent a shiver through him, and they lay together for the first time in the long grass. He woke the next morning with Erik's head pillowed on his chest, Erik's arms around him, and as he kissed him he knew he never wanted to wake any other way again.

(He woke alone many times, after the war ended, after they finally crossed the border back into Texas and parted. He spent two years alone until he turned up Erik who had taken to opium, and he held him as the drug passed through his system, and as he fought the desperate need for it, and at the time he thought things could never get worse than those days, those weeks, but he was wrong, and now he wonders if it was that the opium weakened Erik's lungs, or if it was his own thoughts that brought the curse down upon them.)

He remembers a great many things as he crosses the Rio Grande in late December, 1887. Even now, six weeks on, he knows he's made a mistake in running. He knows he will go back. But there is a pain inside he cannot shake, and Erik is dead, and his heart is pulling him in too many places to think, too many places to remember, where they lived and loved and held each other, and it was Mexico where it all started, after all.

He hopes, only, that Christine is well.

And that she might someday forgive him for having left.

* * *

He drinks mezcal and tequila that tears his throat and waters his eyes, and cries to hear pianos played. He wins two rings in a poker game (one solid gold, one with a turquoise stone) and thinks of how Erik will like them until he remembers Erik is gone, and that he once wore turquoise stones in his ears. He crosses into Arizona when it's more than he can bear, and as he passes through Tucson he remembers Erik's haemorrhages, and the baby Christine lost.

He gets drunk and starts a fight and spends a night in a cell during which he cries for what they might have had and remembers the long night, the night of the miscarriage, that he sat by the bed holding Christine's hand, listening to Erik's ragged breathing, and how he sat there trying to think what to say, how to tell Christine what had happened, how to tell her if Erik died, how to tell Erik if Christine died. When she finally woke, so terribly pale and frail, he managed to get the words out somehow, and held her as she cried.

When exhaustion pulled her back to sleep, he stood outside and wept.

Weeks later, when Erik was gaining his strength, she was the one who told him what happened. And Emir returned to find them asleep, the tears drying on their faces, Erik holding Christine close, and he fixed the sheets around them, and kissed each of their heads, and slept in the chair, so he would not wake them.

(It was in Utah, two years later, after they had had to run, as he cradled Erik close beneath the stars, that she told him, in a voice so soft it was barely a whisper, that she had not known how much she wanted a baby, until she lost the one she didn't know she had been carrying. And it was in Deadwood, three years after that, that Erik told him the same. And he never told either of them that he had wanted the baby too. It was their grief, and his only because he loved them.)

It is the night in Tucson, that convinces him to go back.

* * *

It is late March when he is back in Glenwood. Christine is long gone, but he had not expected her to linger.

He visits Erik's grave, and lays delicate flowers down beside the simple marker, and there are tears in his eyes and snow still on the ground but there is nothing he can say, no words that can break through the lump in his throat, and he stands there a long time, looking down, not thinking of very much at all.

He finds a piano in the old saloon Erik used to stumble down to when he craved the feel of music beneath his fingertips, and pays the man to play Chopin's mazurkas all night as he drinks his way through a bottle of whiskey.

* * *

It is Cheyenne where he finally catches up to her. Cheyenne, and she is wearing an old suit of Erik's, tailored to fit her smaller body. Her blonde curls are shorn so that they barely reach her ears, and there is a pink silk cravat around her throat.

Several rings shine on her fingers.

She does not see him, not at first. She is playing nocturnes, and little pieces that are not familiar to his ears at all, but have a twist of Erik through them, a little distorted, a little changed, and he realises that she has been composing.

Erik would be so proud of her.

(He is proud of her too. So proud that something unfamiliar stabs in his heart alongside the numbness of missing Erik, and he realises that he's missed her very much too, missed her smile and missed her gentleness, and her eyes, and how she hugs him when she knows he needs it, and how she was always careful with him, just as he was with her, but how they confessed things to each other that would have upset Erik to hear.)

She stands from the piano, and turns away from it, and their eyes meet across the room.

Something that might be a smile twitches at his lips.

She comes through the crowd, and settles at the other side of his table. Her complexion is pale, her eyes hollowed, and he can see, now, that she has borne grief as difficult as he has.

"Christine."

His voice is hoarse with disuse, but the shape of her name is familiar.

She swallows, and reaches across the table, and her mouth is soft against his.

He surrenders to her kiss.

* * *

"Don't ever leave me like that again," she whispers, pulling back just enough to speak, their lips still brushing, and there are fresh tears in her eyes, her lips swollen from his, and he swallows, and nods, and squeezes her hand.

"I'll do my best," he whispers, and it feels like a confession.

(He will never part from her again. Even now he feels it deep in his bones even though he does not know it. He is tired of being alone, tired of hollowness, and no one can ever replace Erik, but he does not want her to. Christine is perfect all on her own, and he's known that for ten years and loved her for every one of them even though he did not know he loved her for her own sake, only thought he was loving her because Erik loved her. But he loves her, he loves her and he's not ready for the certainty of that yet, but this he can promise, that he will never leave her side.)

* * *

There are things in his life he has regretted, but it is mostly the years he wandered alone from Erik, when they fell apart just as easily as they fell together, even though there was the promise that they would meet again. He did not regret them at the time, but he regrets them now, regrets ever having been a moment without him when he could have been with him. They say hindsight brings wisdom, and he gained hindsight when Erik appeared before him in Dodge, and told him that he was ill, and that he never wanted to be anywhere else in the world but at Emir's side.

(Erik regretted those years too, but he never told Emir that, in case it would upset him, and for all that Erik did and was, he never wanted to upset those he loved.)

Emir has never regretted giving Erik permission to love Christine.

* * *

They leave Cheyenne that night and lie beneath the stars, but they do not make love. They are not ready for that, and for all they've been through in the last six months, and in the eighteen months before that as Erik's health went into its final decline, all they need now is to not be alone, to have the safety of knowing that here is the other who loved Erik, and who understands.

They press themselves together, wrapped up in blankets, and as tears slip from her closed eyes, he kisses her eyelids and whispers, "I miss him too." And it is enough for now.

* * *

They travel because they are too restless to settle, too full of grief, even back with each other. Erik saved both of them, loved both of them. Them loving each other is just what he would have wanted, would have made him endlessly happy, and it is one of the things Emir knows best and that he clings to.

He plays cards and she plays pianos. He sketches her with fingers that are out of practice, and sketches anyone who asks for it for the sake of money. He sketches Erik from memory, the angles of his cheeks, the good and the bad, the hollows around his eyes, the softness in his mouth, always as if he might be slightly amused, as if he were in on a joke no one else could understand, and that slight smile was love, right there. He remembers him laughing, remembers him giggling, remembers him jumping up to dance when he had the breath for it and pulling each of them into his arms, remembers the feel of his kisses and how he might whisper in his sleep and how he looked beneath the light of a full moon, his skin pale and fine.

He draws himself beside him, and Christine, and feels a sharp stab of pain in his heart, fresh and keen, that catches him off-guard. He chokes on a sob, and Christine pulls him into her arms, and her tears are damp in his hair.

* * *

He lays her down beneath the sun. She lays him down beneath the moon. They trace each other's scars and leave impressions on their skin. Her eyes are wide and blue as the sky above the first time he enters her, and her fingers stroke his hair, pull him close, as he nuzzles her throat and kisses her breasts and swears his love for her. She breathes his name into his mouth as she strokes him, and they lie together a long time, holding each other close, not daring to speak, hardly daring to breathe, their legs entwined and mouths together, but not kissing.

There are salty tears on each of their cheeks, but neither of them notice.

It is healing, and it is painful, and it is theirs.

(Sometimes he thinks this must be how the first people felt.)

* * *

She tells him about the baby in November. It is a year and a day since Erik died, and though they considered going to Glenwood, neither could bear it. They lie in bed all day the day of the anniversary, and hold each other close, and whisper about him, and laugh as they cry which is just what he would want.

("…remember the chess game?" "…remember how he twirled you around?" "…remember what he told that hotelier in Tombstone?" "…remember New Year's Eve in Dodge?" "…remember how he laughed when…" "…and Chopin is fit for all occasions…" "…why sir, I have _played_ a Chickering Square Grand and allow me to assure you…" "…like someone from an old tale…" …remember…remember…remember…)

They do not remember Tucson, not that day, but the next day she whispers of it as she lays his hand on her belly, and he understands.

Tears well in his eyes, and he pulls her close, and whispers he loves her.

* * *

Her belly grows, and it is a constant wonder, to think that there is a life inside of her that they have made together. Last time, none of them knew until it was too late, but this time he lays his hand on her belly every night, and sometimes he thinks of Erik, and the music Erik played after what happened happened, but mostly he thinks of Christine, and how much he loves her, and loves this baby that he cannot even touch yet.

(Ill as he was, Erik would have still made a wonderful father, and Emir knows that, and it's the cruelty of it that he never got the chance. But he promises himself that this baby will know Erik as well as he can, through his music and through portraits and through the stories about him, and will know everything he was, and how beautiful he was in every way, and that he was the best man in the world.)

It would be only right, for the baby to born in Glenwood. Where she first kissed him, and where they last held Erik.

He suggests it to her one night, even though he knows they shouldn't be travelling, not when she is expecting, but she agrees, and when he raises his concerns, she kisses him and whispers, "I know this baby will make it."

* * *

They could ride hard for Glenwood. They're good at it. They've done it often enough in the past. They rode harder than anyone would have said wise through Utah when Erik was ill (the haemorrhage, and they kept switching which horse he was on, and which of them sat behind him to hold him with his head on their shoulder, and sometimes he still dreams about that ride, Erik slumped back against him, his forehead warm against his neck, fingers limp in his grasp), though they took things slow by their standards, considering there was law after them somewhere, not to jostle him too much.

They take it slow, returning to Glenwood. Picking their way along carefully by day, resting often. He massages the cramps from her back, and wraps her in extra blankets, and holds her close. He kisses the swell of her belly beneath the moon, and thinks of his tiny son living within her (or his tiny daughter, he will be happy either way so long as Christine is well). She kisses him, and guides his hand to where she wants his touch the most, and he brings her pleasure as gently as he can until she gasps and whimpers in the darkness, and he kisses her and holds her closer.

"I'm going to love you enough for the two of us," he whispers, looking down into her beautiful face, silver in the moonlight, and her hand cups his cheek as she smiles.

It is more sacred than any vow.

* * *

If they'd ridden a little harder, they would have made Glenwood before nightfall. But it is by silent agreement that they ride slightly slower that day, each of them needing one more night, before they face the town where what they once knew ended.

They lie together, and speak softly of Erik, and there is a solemnity to it, as if this is how they are laying his ghost to rest. Tomorrow they will be in Glenwood. In six weeks (by their best estimate) their baby is due. Erik will always be in their hearts, and never will a day go by that they don't think of him, and love him, but they cannot dwell on the past, on what they lost and what might have been, when there is so much future for them, and they can be happy, and he would be so very happy for them.

They lie together by the fire, and he kisses her fingers, and slips one of her rings onto his finger, and she slips one of his onto hers.

They have agreed that they will never marry. Marriage would not make them love each other any more than they do, marriage would not make what they have any more sacred. And it would not be fair to Erik or his memory, that they could not marry him. This is as close to a marriage as they will ever get, and it is all they want.

And as they exchange rings, they silently release Erik's memory. They are not sure, how much of an afterlife they believe in. But someday, they feel, they will know him again.

And they will always love him.

But they have each other, too.

"I promise I'm going to love you for the rest of your life," he whispers, heart aching with everything he feels, and she kisses him, and takes his hands, and whispers, "I promise I'm going to love you for the rest of yours."

* * *

His son is born on a cold day in April, just one day past Erik's birthday. The midwife tried to send him away, but the only place he would bear to go is the graveyard, and he cannot sit with Erik when Christine is having his child. So he insists on staying, and he knows by the tears in Christine's eyes, and the way she squeezes his hand, that she wants him there.

His son is tiny and perfect, and he holds him close as he cries, and kisses his soft forehead, and knows before Christine ever says anything what they will name him.

There is only one name they could ever give him, really.

* * *

That night he dreams of Erik. Not Erik how he was at the end, frail and gaunt and grey and barely able to speak for how the disease had ravaged his lungs. But Erik as he was in Dodge, when they first knew Christine.

He is walking along a riverbank beneath the stars, when Erik comes to him, silvery pale beneath the moonlight, more lines in his face than he had in Mexico but not so many as in Colorado, and his eyes shine gold through the hazel, as he takes his hands, and kisses him.

"I'll always be there," he whispers, and his voice is soft in Emir's ear, "always, for all three of you."

Emir kisses him back, and twines their fingers, and breathes, "we'll always love you, every moment."

Erik's smile is soft, just a little crooked, just a little sad. "I know."

(And when Emir wakes to his baby son's cries, his heart will be easier than he has known in a long time.)

* * *

**A/N: I have one more piece left to post in this 'verse which I will post Sunday. If you've enjoyed this, please review!**


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